ketch-Up: Crafting a Warmer, Safer Path to Adult Friendships

Highlight Overview

ketch-Up is a community platform helping women build real, lasting friendships through small, intentional in-person meetups. Interest was strong, but most first-time visitors hesitated at the final step — browsing without registering. Through user interviews, a heuristic review, and an analytics audit, I traced the drop-off to two causes: the homepage didn’t clearly explain what ketch-Up was or who it was for, and meetup pages didn’t give women enough confidence to commit to showing up. I redesigned both around one goal: turn passive curiosity into confident registration.

Impact

22 participants in the unmoderated usability test that validated the redesign
Checkout bug caught and fixed before it reached production
Testers reported feeling significantly safer and more informed after the redesign

The Challenge

Direct user interviews revealed that when women arrive at ketch-Up, they’re quietly asking two questions: “Is this real?” and “Will I feel safe here?” If the site doesn’t answer both fast, they leave. Research surfaced two core problems: a lack of clarity about what ketch-Up is and who it’s for, and friction on meetup pages that left women without enough confidence or detail to convert interest into attendance.

My Role & Method

Role: UX + UI Design, User Research, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Prototyping & Usability Testing

Tools: Lyssna, FigJam, Figma

To ground the redesign in evidence rather than assumption, I ran:

Founder interview — semi-structured interview to ask questions about the brief and learnings so far
Participant interviews — semi-structured sessions covering past event behaviour, introvert/extrovert dynamics, and what builds or breaks trust on a website
Heuristic evaluation — a structured usability audit of the existing site
Competitor analysis — a comparison matrix across four direct alternatives on utility, pricing, tone, and entry friction
Analytics review — traffic and drop-off data, plus a WebAIM contrast check

What I Found

The “vibe” gap(interviews) — women wanted to know who’d be there and what the atmosphere was like before committing
Buried details(heuristic evaluation) — practical logistics were hard to find, adding decision fatigue
The trust gap(interviews + competitor analysis) — visitors needed concrete legitimacy signals: real photos, host profiles, reviews
Accessibility risk(WebAIM audit) — the homepage’s coral-on-white text failed contrast at 1.83:1
Mobile drop-off(analytics) — strong social-driven mobile traffic wasn’t converting because the layout wasn’t optimised for it
Market gap(competitor analysis) — competitors leaned generic and transactional; nobody owned “small, guided, intentional meetups”

The Solution

Make the value clear from the start
I rebuilt the homepage around real member stories and a clearer value proposition, so visitors understand what ketch-Up is — and why to join — within seconds.
Build trust into the experience
Rather than relying on trust badges alone, I built reassurance into the structure itself: real member reviews, transparent pricing, detailed host profiles, verification badges, ABN details and a clear cancellation policy.
Make meetups easier to understand
I redesigned meetup pages to answer what visitors need before committing — who’s hosting, what to expect, how many places are left. Live seat tracking adds a sense of activity and confidence to book.
Remove friction on mobile
Mobile was a key source of drop-off, so I simplified the experience with a sticky CTA, fewer checkout fields, and pricing shown upfront rather than three steps in.
Test, learn and improve
I validated the redesign with an unmoderated Lyssna study of 22 participants. Results confirmed improvements in clarity and emotional reassurance, and surfaced a checkout bug I fixed before the next round of testing.

Outcome

The redesign validated the trust-first approach as the right call, and testing caught a production-bound bug before it could cost the client a costly, visible failure at launch. Beyond this redesign, I also scoped a low-cost way to validate demand for a future community chat feature before any engineering investment — an approach I’m happy to walk through in conversation.